Plant Sex, Does it Really Exist?

Yes there is plant sex, at least in accordance with the same manner that we perceive sexuality in humans.

There are inflorescences and flowers of the same plant species, as in corn or maize, which are considered purely male, and there
are those which are purely female. In dioecious plants where these
male and female flowers are separated in different individuals, like
date palm, there are male and there are female plants in the same way that there are human males and females. By sex it is meant that there are kinds, or genders, of organisms performing distinct reproductive functions.

It is now of common recognition that just like humans and other animals, plants have male and female sexual organs (flower parts) which produce male and female sexual gametes, respectively. Likewise, X and Y chromosomes are involved in sex determination.

Insert: The
continued reference to male and female flowers and plants is likely for
convenenience in which the distinctions between the sporophytic and
the gametophytic generations are taken aside. Botanically, according
to Randy Moore and co-authors of Botany, International ed., published
2003 by McGraw-Hill, 919 p., such a reference is incorrect because no
sporophyte or any part of the sporophyte can have a gender.
Accordingly, only the gametophytes can be male or female because
they are the direct producers of the male and female gametes.

The credit for discovering the existence of sex in plants is generally attributed to Camerarius. He demonstrated that there are two sexual variants among date palm individuals: the males and the females. The word "generally" is used here because there is no unanimity as yet.

According to Roberts (1929) and other supporters, Rudolph Jacob Camerarius established the certainty of sex in
plants by experimental evidence in 1694. However, he was not the first to
know of it. These
two sentences may appear to be contradictory, but no. For clarity, let us
find enlightenment from the words of this prominent author close to a
century ago.

This
matter of how sex in plants was established was discussed by Herbert
Fuller Roberts of the University of Manitoba (Canada) in his book
entitled “Plant Hybridization Before Mendel” published in 1929.

Notes
from Roberts (1929)

Accordingly,
it was recognized from the very early times of its cultivation,
probably in ancient Babylonia and Assyria, that there existed two
types of date palm: the sterile and the fruit-bearing.

Likewise
it was known that the product of a “sterile” male tree was needed
in order for a fertile “female” tree to bear fruits. Further, it
was found that the pollen from a few trees could fertilize many
female trees by hand-pollination. The word “sterile” here should
mean being unable to produce an offspring while “fertile” is the
reverse, with the same application as in infertile or fertile period
for women.

The
Arabs continued the practice of manual pollination and seem to have
noticed that date palm is divided into two sexes with similar
functions to that in humans, particularly in the creation of a new
individual. Many
more could have known the existence of plant sex.

Kazwini (circa A.D.
1283), an Arabic writer on natural history, wrote of the date palm:

“It is created out of the same substance as Adam, and is the only
tree that is artificially fertilized.”

and
also:

“The date has a striking resemblance to man, through the beauty of
its erect and slender figure, its division into two distinct sexes,
and the property, which is peculiar to it, of being fecundated by a
sort of union.”

The early Greeks and the Romans must have also known about plant sex. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), Herodotus, Pliny, and Theophrastus (370-287 B.C.) were among those who mentioned it.

However, there was neither suggestion nor investigation to establish the certainty of plant sex and its application to the formation of seeds and to crop improvement. The artificial pollination of date was only for the purpose of ensuring that individual dates bear more fruits.

Roberts suggested that apart from date, there was then no other dioecious plant of economic value. Had there been other more, particularly the annual grain-producing plants, plant breeding could have advanced at a very early age.

Camerarius
did it. He provided the experimental evidence for the existence of
plant sex.

Camerarius
(1665-1721) is the Latinized name of Rudolph Jacob Camerer, then
professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Tübingen
in Germany. On August 25, 1694 (he
was 29 years old), he published his memoirs in the form of a letter
entitled “ De Sexu Plantarum Epistola.”

It
was the first documentation of a scientific investigation on the
existence of sex in plants. For his test plants he used the
Mercurialis, spinach, and hemp which are all dioecious, and corn
or maize which is a monoecious plant.

He
proved that pollen is essential to fertilization, that the
pollen-producing flowers or plants are male, and that the
seed-bearing plants are female. He also discovered that the removal
of the pollen-bearing flowers from the staminate inflorescence
(tassel) of a corn plant grown in isolation prevented seed formation.

In
addition, he contemplated the possibility of outcrossing plants which
are now known to belong to different taxonomic classifications. He
particularly mentioned hemp x hops, and castor bean x Turkish wheat.
He would not be surprised that the advances in plant breeding have
now led to the development of transgenic varieties.

Personal note: The above narration seems to me that plant sex, at least in date palm, had become common knowledge to many, a long time ago before Camerarius. The second quotation from Kazwini in fact clearly stated its existence. Still, in the world of science, it is not sufficient that the existence of a fact be made known. The rule now requires that such a fact must be supported with properly obtained experimental evidence and duly published. The ancients were not privy to these rules.

Anyway, the issue of whether or not Camerarius is the "first" is a trivial matter. What really matters is that he proved the existence of plant sex in a manner that is acceptable to the end users. And being so, his investigation could have provided the catapult in plant breeding.

A new thought: Was he credited as well for discovering artificial pollination by means of experimentation?